söndag 28 oktober 2012

Intervju med Joe Duplantier i Gojira!

Jag har nu träffat och intervjuat Joe så många gånger att vi borde kunna börja skicka julkort till varandra. Konserten på Göta Källare var utsåld och bandet visade ännu en gång vilken otrolig kraft de besitter i sina liveframträdanden. Några timmar innan konserten satt vi ner backstage och pratade om lite allt möjligt. Bla berättade Joe att det bli en ny livedvd som spelas in i London, hur de gjorde sin egen merchandise i Seattle och var hans intresse för naturen kommer ifrån.The tour then, all good?
Joe Duplantier: Yeah, all good. Well, it´s the beginning of it so now I´m sick, but this is normal. After three or four shows, my throat is becoming fragile because I scream every night. Especially in winter time, but it´s normal.How do you take care of your voice? It´s such an important part of your performance.
JD: I´m supposed to sleep a lot and drink a lot of water, but instead I don´t drink water and I don´t sleep, so of course it doesn´t help. I´m hyper active or a special kind of hyper active. I´m not all over the place, but I can´t sleep. Especially after a full day of work. I sneak out to the stage all the time ti check and the guys go “Dude, relax! Go to the dressing room!” and then we play the show and I can´t go to bed right after that. We film the show and I watch the show with the light guy and then I need one or two hours to do other stuff, so I never sleep and that´s a problem. But the tour´s been going great. We started in Moscow a couple of days ago and Russia is fucked up! It´s incredible. We were stuck at the border for 10 hours on our way out, which is surprising. You would think that going out was no problem, but it was. We were very, very late and we thought we were gonna have to cancel the show in Finland. We arrived when the doors opened, so the audience was waiting outside in line in the cold and they saw the bus coming, “What the fuck! You´re coming now? You should be warmed up and ready to go.”. The crew worked hard but we forgot about some of the production we have, but the show was incredible.What got you stuck there? Passport issues?
JD: There was nothing wrong with that. Maybe they just didn´t like our faces, I don´t know. Things are not put together well and the customs is not in touch with the government.
It´s all corrupt, I guess.
JD: Yeah and you also have to know how to give them the money. “How do I do this? Am I giving it to this guy or is he gonna run away with it? Is it going to work?”. You gotta have a “guy” and we didn´t have a “guy” this time which was a mistake. The result was that we arrived at the last minute and the show was really, really good. We had this tension “Aaaarrgh!” and it was good.
Something good came from something bad.You´re doing your own headlining tour in the US and Canada with Devin Townsend. A package like that, does that come from you or is it the record company coming up with the idea?
JD: We had to fight for it. We talked to Devin last summer at a festival and it was like “We should play together. My fans always talk about you and you´re fans talk about me. Let´s do something.”. I told him “We need to headline.” And I would never imagine Devin opening for us, but he went “Dude, I opened for you guys.”. It came from the connection and the friendship that we have and mutual respect. He´s stoked. The label had other ideas, but it´s great. We never had such a powerful opener.Are there a lot of business talk behind such a thing? That his crowd might draw so and so many and you so and so?
JD: Yeah. Actually, it didn´t really fit with the business thinking and that´s why I said we had to fight for him. Everybody respects him to death; the record company, management, the sponsors. Everybody was like “Yeah, Devin man! But wait, you have the same crowd!”, so it wasn´t exactly the best solution for the partners, but oh my god, the experience, the inspiration is the best definitely so finally they went “Alright, let´s do it!”. If you don´t say anything as a musician, everybody will go “Ok, we´re going with this, because his manager knows this manager and so on.”. You have to fight for things sometimes and that´s probably why we´re a bit tired sometimes, because we try to face each problem and be present everywhere. Like right now, I would be on stage checking stuff like “The gaffa tape should be like this!”. (laughs)I talked to a member of a Swedish band (Bullet) recently and they´ve made a name for themselves but they´re still a small band, but he said that there are so many meetings with the label and managers and stuff, it felt like a regular job. Is there a lot of that stuff?
JD: Yeah a lot of that and it´s more and more complicated. This business is very complicated. All the record companies and even managements are reinventing their jobs because they don´t sell records anymore. Take any business and divide it by 10 when it comes to income. It´s a mess, so everybody´s trying to reinvent it. The record companies are trying to be publishers and the management tries to sell merchandise and they do everything at the same time, so they ask a lot of the bands because they can´t do their job properly. They have to do 10 jobs in order to multiply with 10 incomes plus they have to fire people all the time and get new ones to be able to adapt to all these new mechanisms, so it´s very, very complicated and very tiring and very far from music, really. You have to be strong and know what you want. Be flexible.
Another thing. Playing a tour like this one and you do so many dates in all these different countries, do you change the setlist around a lot of is it the same one all the way through?
JD: This is an interesting question because we´re in the middle of this right now. Our goal is to have a setlist that works perfectly like a magic formula. You start with a song and the next one has to be a little more catchy and you want to keep people’s attention and entertain them. You don´t want to challenge them too much and lose them. You need to keep them in the set. A band who doesn´t know how to do this, gone. It´s the core of everything actually. Get people´s attention, on the album and live. In Russia we played some songs for the first timeand of course we can play some old songs that we´ve played a 1000 times in France, so the setlist is changing a little bit, but usually it stays the same. We try to find the perfect one, but at the same time have some songs that we bring in and some songs that we get rid of, just to keep ourselves on our toes.
As you said earlier, you should be sleeping now. All this time you have, coming into a new town and sitting around, do you spend some time coming up with new cool riffs and stuff like that?
JD: Hopefully it´ll come in a week or something because we´re still trying to figure out what´s the best option for this and that. There´s a lot of DIY going on. We do not only have a new crew doing their stuff, I´m still a lot on the stage with the guys trying to find the best way to get the light right. We had ideas with this “head” (cover art for latest album L´Enfant sauvage) and we´re trying to put a light behind it. We have something but it´s not perfect so it´s like we have to go to the store and buy something. All these little things are in the way for us before we can relax and start composing. In order to compose you need to have time and we don´t have that yet.
All the stuff with the stage, is that a fun creative process or is it just a big hassle?
JD: Sometimes when you go on tour it´s like “Ok, there´s this tour in the UK from here to here.” and you can go “Ok, let´s go!” and it´s just “Eeehhh…” (makes a bored sound), but it´s also “Let´s do something, man!”. You have to have ideas and you have to want to do something and have energy. Each tour is a new challenge. When we get to the stage there´s no “head” waiting for us. We have to build it, man. We have to get there earlier and find someone who can do it and all that kind of stuff. It´s very DIY. We have paintings, spray paint and stencils and tools in the bus. We repair things, we fix things. In the end, I´m the one thinking about the stage and all these things. To answer your question, at first it´s like “Ah shit, we need to do that.”, but then when you do it, it´s great and it´s a lot of fun trying to make it better and better. I love it.Cool! Your interest in nature and the state of the world and Sea Shepherd and all that, is that something that came early on in your childhood? Did it come from your parents?
JD: maybe from another life, I don´t know. (laughs) As far back as I can remember, I was always shocked and concerned. We grew up close to the ocean and we would walk on the beach and see the oil and go “Why? Mama you told me not to throw paper on the ground and people dump oil in the sand. What the fuck?”. Something didn´t match and I understood early on that education is very important. You shouldn´t throw stuff on the ground and when you see people doing it massively all over the world I was asking why.Sea Shepherd, in some countries they´re considered eco terrorists and stuff like that. Do you think that you sometimes have to use certain methods to get across to people?
JD: Yeah, it´s a good question. I think in that case, yes. I´m against violence and aggression and I like to promote communication instead. In that case, when someone is getting killed in front of you and you don´t do something to stop it, you´re killing it a little bit. For example, we have a few whales left on this planet. Some people go and kill them and there are treaties and laws that like a 100 countries have signed. There´s a small window in it that allows to take a whale a year for science, but instead they go every year and take 300 whales when there´s just a couple of 1000 left. In that particular case, I think stopping them without hurting them is good. I don´t think they hurt anyone. Maybe they will cause damage. I would like to be in a boat and fucking destroy their boat, even though I´m a pacifist. I think it´s a little reductive to call them terrorists. No one will blame the police when they stop terrorists from killing people. It´s a bit complex and in a perfect world you don´t need to use violence, but it´s not a perfect world.
Far from it.With all the cool art you´ve done, have you ever thought of having like a small art show at the venue where you play? For fans to check out before the show.
JD: That´s a great idea, man! You just gave me an idea. (laughs) It could be cool. Mario´s selling drum skins. We don´t wanna throw them away and we like to give them to a drummer like “Hey, use that!”. He´s painting on them and selling them to kids but very cheap. We started together at one show. We didn´t receive the merchandise and we were like “Fuck, we´re fucked!”. It was in Seattle and we were coming back from Canada. We went to Wal-Mart and bought a bunch of black shirts and we did stencils with spray paint and then it was like “It´s not enough.”. We only had like 30 shirts and then to sell them for 20 bucks… we have to make a certain amount and it´s a struggle. We took pieces of wood and plastic, anything we could find and made paintings to sell and for five or six shows we did that together. It was kinda cool and we made the exact amount we needed to fill the gap, you know. It was incredibly entertaining and relaxing and then Mario kept doing this with his drum skins and I stopped because I´m always on stage checking things out or doing interviews. I would like to have the time too to do this. An exhibition is a cool idea. Selling stuff you did in the afternoon is fun and you make a little bit of money and for the fans it´s like “Wow, the drummer made this!”. But we don´t consider ourselves artists.Last time we met we talked a bit about books. Any favorites?
JD: I have books at home that I like to open up sometimes. “The Tibetan book of living and dying” is my bible. When I feel down or sometimes bad, I open it up and go “Oh my god, thank you!”, you know? It´s a source of inspiration.Cool! After the Devin Townsend tour in the US, any more plans after that?
JD: Yeah, we want to do more shows in Europe. On this tour we do Scandinavia, Russia, England and France. No Germany or Spain and Poland is amazing for us. First time we played in Warsaw we came to the venue and it was huge. We thought it was a mistake of some sort, but it was packed. It was crazy. We need to go to Poland and we don´t do a Paris show on this tour, so we need that too.Any more live DVD´s? Anything from this tour?
JD: Yeah, we´re probably gonna film a show in London on this tour. It´s a pretty good venue, like 1500 or something. It´s a decent size and a good place to shoot a DVD and we have the stage set up with projected videos and stuff so we wanna capture that, because it´s so much work putting all that together. Maybe we´re just gonna give it away on the internet. I don´t know yet, but Roadrunner will probably say “Don´t give it away, sell it away!” (laughs) If it was just up to me it would be for free.
Ok. Thank you so much Joe!
JD: You´re welcome!

Jag gillar verkligen Mick Wall och de böcker han tidigare skrivit om bl a Metallica och Led Zeppelin. Hans senaste tegelsten om AC/DC har nu utkommit och på sin blogg säger han följande:﻿"I'm proud of it. It's the best thing I've done since the Zeppelin book. Not that I'm not proud of the Metallica book too. I am, very. But some books just have that little something extra and AC/DC has it. Mainly, because their story has simply never been told before, except by well-meaning fans. I am not and never have been a well-meaning fan. I am a sniffer out of great stories. And the best never run smoothly. That's what makes them great. The nitty-gritty shitty-bitty titty-licky truth. You know, that thing the bands never actually want anyone to know? Yeah, that."Saxat från innerkonvolutet: "Megan Fox likes to be seen wearing their T-shirts. Keith Richards says guitarist Malcolm Young is better than he is. While the LA Times memorably asked: 'Why so many Satanic lyrics? Why the bisexual implications in the name? Didn't the lead singer drink himself to death? What kind of heroes are these?'
The answer: the kind that has sold over 200 million albums, played more than 10,000 shows, and still doesn't give a fuck what you think about it.
They are AC/DC and this is their never-before-told story. From their gang-busting origins on the notoriously heavy Australian pub scene of the early 1970s, to their punk-defying assault on first Britain then America in the 1980s - ruthlessly shedding many of the band members, managers, producers and record company executives that helped them get there - this is the hard-hitting, behind closed doors, in-depth biography AC/DC fans have been waiting for.
In Hell Ain't A Bad Place To Be, world-renowned rock chronicler Mick Wall unearths fresh, previously unheard testimony from all the key players in the AC/DC story. In doing so, he recounts more than the story of one band; he tells the story of a family - a clan - that brooks no quarrel from outsiders.
Uncovering for the first time the truth behind the mysterious death of singer Bon Scott in 1980, and giving unflinching insight into the dizzying highs and often self-inflicted lows of their career thereafter with replacement Brian Johnson, this is the story of three determinedly ruthless brothers - Malcolm and his schoolboy-uniform-wearing younger sibling Angus, and older brother George, who masterminded all their early albums and remains the eminence-grise behind AC/DC to this day.
Tough guys from the Glasgow schemes, the Youngs have seen off drugs, death, divorce and the eternal damnation of critics to become one of the biggest, best-known rock bands in the world. 'We know what we are,' Angus once said. 'Rock'n'roll.'"/Niclas

fredag 26 oktober 2012

Henry befinner sig i Mississippi och minns en tidig spelning i staten samt hur mycket han påverkats av blues. ﻿"The more I listened to and read about the lives of some of these players, the more I understood about American history and the country's incredible capacity for violence. I came to the conclusion that it was the blues that was American music's Big Bang."Henry HÄR

lördag 20 oktober 2012

Intervju med John Nymann i Y&T!

När jag letade efter lite saker inför intervjun med John hittade jag min gamla mailintervju med honom från 2004, vilken jag fullkomligt glömt. Time flies, som man säger. Nu skriver vi 2012 och Y&T är verkligen på bettet, vilket konserten på Göta källare visade. Bandet turnerar som aldrig förr och har en relativt färsk platta, "Facemelter", i bagaget och en dubbel livecd som kommer ut på Frontiers i november.John var lika trevlig som sist vi sågs och det blev snack om bl a senaste plattan, det glada 80-talet, hans tidiga karriär och om hur Heather Locklear spolade ner Tommy Lees droger.How´s the tour been going?
John Nymann: Well, we just started. It´s our fifth show tonight, but it´s been eventful because we´re doing fly dates. Athens, Greece to Helsinki, Finland and then over here to Sweden. We´re a little jetlagged from just getting out here as always the first week, but it´s going great. It was the first time in Greece and it was packed, sold out. A lot of passion and people singing every song and that makes you feel good when you´re in a band. (laughs) Even the melodies when Meniketti plays guitar and crying when people hear “I believe in you” and people crying to “Midnight in Tokyo” and “Forever”. It´s like “Finally I´m hearing this after all these years!”.Well, they´ve got a lot to cry about in Greece.
John Nymann: Yeah, true. (laughs) But it was a passionate crowd as is always the first time, in Helsinki too. This time was a week night and then Sweden is always good, thanks to Sweden Rock Festival and all the fans that supported us all these years.Speaking of crying. The first time you played SRF, I almost cried. I had been longing for it for such a long time. I became a fan when “In rock we trust” came out and I just wished for Y&T coming to play over here, but they never did. It was a killer show!
John Nymann: I know. I don´t know how good we were, because we had just gotten back together and with me playing guitar. I joined as a background singer during the “In rock we trust” tour. They hired me and the band I was in, The Eric Martin Band, had just lost the record deal and we threw in the towel basically and Eric went off to do some stuff before Mr. Big. He did some soul music and tried some other avenues, but Y&T said right away “Hey, you wanna come on the road with us? We´ve got this great record with all these vocals on that we can´t do, so we need some extra support.”. I did keyboards and sang and it was great. I love that record! “In rock we trust” is one of my favorite Y&T records as well as “Ten”. It´s really good, but there´s something good about every one of them. I´ve known them since before they were a band. I grew up three blocks from Meniketti.So that´s the connection!
John Nymann: Yeah, we go back to high school. I´ve been longer friends with Leonard, since we were 12 and he was in a band called The Mustangs and his guitar player showed me my first things like “Secret agent man” or something. Then three years later I saw Meniketti doing a high school jam after school and they were so good. Leonard too. He had gotten so much better as a drummer and had this big Gretsch set and Meniketti with his Les Paul. They were doing poppy songs like “Make me smile” by Chicago and I was so influenced that it really kicked me in the ass to go home and work it. Then I started a band and next thing you know, I was the opening band for their band. When Yesterday & Today started up, I had a band called Mile High and we used to open up a lot of shows for them, so we just got real close.That “In rock we trust” tour must´ve been a blast? Parties and girls?
John Nymann: (laughs) Yeah, you know. For me it was great, because… how old was I? I was 29 and single and as a matter of fact, I was the only single in the band. They were all married so I had the pick of the litter and we were out with Mötley Crüe for “Theater of pain”. (laughs) I couldn´t have been more happy and Mötley Crüe loved Y&T because they used to open up for Y&T, so we just had whatever we wanted. They´d come party on our bus and bring all their girls, so it was great. It was a perfect time. It was many tours but that one in particular was girls, girls, girls. (laughs)Back then, was that tour only in the US?
John Nymann: Yes. And Canada. That was an intensive tour because “Theater of pain” was a pretty big album, so we were playing 20 000 seaters sometimes. I mean, as much as. That was probably the biggest, but it was memorable for me for many reasons. I love to play drums. I´m a drummer and I wanted to be a drummer, but my mom said no. “You gotta play guitar like your brother!”, which I´m glad she did, but Leonard at one part of the show when he did “Rock and roll´s gonna save the world”, they split the audience and did that thing. He was the more vocal guy in the band than the other members besides Dave, so they decided he´d get off the drums and go down to Phil´s mic and they´d split the crowd and get them to scream “Rock”, one of those live performance deals. He asked me to sit in on the drums and I´m sitting there playing these coliseums and I was like “I can´t believe it! Not only am I singing in Y&T and playing with my buddies, I´m playing drums.”. I was cracking up.
Cool! Touring with Mötley Crüe then, did you notice that those guys were heading for trouble, since they were heavily into drugs at that time?
John Nymann: You know, everybody at that time was partying. Sure they were on top of the world and making some dough and they could afford it, you know, to go maybe a little over the top, but they were on every night. I watched them and I was a musician and paying attention and they might be partying but they brought their A game to the stage every night and it didn´t affect them. I heard some stories, like Heather (Locklear) flushing drugs down the toilet because she didn´t want Tommy to do them. (laughs) It was fun times and everybody was care free. It was like “So what!”. I didn´t know them that well after that. We´re a northern California band. (laughs)
Was it all tour buses back then or planes too?
John Nymann: No, tour buses. I don´t know if they flew? Maybe if it was a super long drive. On tour buses you just go to sleep. Nothing to worry about and you wake up in the next town.“Down for the count” then, was it just backup vocals or did you play as well?
John Nymann: I just sang on “Down for the count”. I didn´t play any keyboards on any of the records. I only played them live. They hired a session guy or something. I´m a guitar player. I´m just a utility keyboard player. I can play and I play drums a little bit, but it´s not by any means my main instrument.After that, did you do more stuff with Y&T? I can´t remember.
John Nymann: I was there on through for “Contagious”. I would´ve sung on the record “Contagious”, but I didn´t. They were in LA doing it and the producer was a singer too and he said “We don´t need to bring John down. I can just do the parts.” and I was like “That´s fine.”, but I was still with the band and toured through “Contagious” and then “Ten”, when Stef Burns joined the band… I had been doing it for four years and was itching to play guitar and itching to be in a band doing that instead of being the side guy, so I got a call from Greg Kihn. He´s another local guy and he said “Do you wanna play in my band?” and I said “Sure.”, so I was doing both for a while. Doing Y&T shows and Greg Kihn and then Stef Burns came in and I was kinda hoping for that spot in Y&T because they had kinda hinted around that it would happen, but Stef Burns was a superior guitar player obviously. An awesome player and he was similar looking to Joey Alves, so they got a guy that was skinny, short and had black hair and maybe no one would notice. (laughs) I´m not saying that´s the reason, I´m just joking. Y&T´s manager at the time was managing The VU with Ross Valory and Stef Burns, so the connection was there and it was great. I understood and then they broke up in ´96 or something. Phil and I lived close to each other and he wasn´t playing and I wasn´t playing and we got together and we started to play just for fun and just playing in my garage, Beatles songs and whatever we felt like doing. It sounded pretty good and I said “Wouldn´t it be fun if we called Meniketti and put Y&T back together?” and Phil said “Ah, he´ll never do that. He´s doing his solo records. Y&T is over.” And then just six months later they got a call to get back together, so it all worked out and now it´s been just great. The band´s playing more than ever in the last ten years and “Facemelter” is great. I´m so happy. I would never had thought that in 2000, that this was gonna happen and neither did Phil or Dave. They just didn´t know that there was this demand in Europe for classic rock. It keeps us busy.
Going back. The stuff you did with Eric Martin, was that the first real stuff you did?
John Nymann: Well, the Mile High band that I told you about was like a junior Y&T and we modeled ourselves after that style, we were playing around and Eric Martin was in another band called Kid Courage and we played the same bill and clubs together. The first time I saw him play and he saw our band play, we both came up to each other and said “Dude, I wish you were in my band.”. Time went on and he gave me a call and he was in LA at the time and he said “I really wanna hook up with you and put a band together.”. He joined our band and our drummer had just quit. He was kinda the lead singer and I sang lead on some songs, but he was the main singer, so it was perfect timing. We got another drummer and Eric came in and that was the start of it. We did a couple of shows as Mile High and we quickly did a little four track demo and we had the connection with Herbie Herbert from Journey and he actually handled us for a while and we opened up some shows for Journey. Just like Y&T had that connection. We´re all from San Francisco and blah, blah, blah. We brought them a tape and they signed us just based on that four track demo and said “We love it!”. It was the 80´s and trying to be modern so he said “Let´s call it Area Code 415.” and then we shortened it to 415 and that was gonna be the record when it came out and then we got sued by the record company 415 Records, which was a punk rock kinda label and since we couldn´t come up with another name and Eric wrote most of the songs, Herbie just said “Let´s just call it the Eric Martin Band.”. It was a little bit like “Whatever!”. It didn´t go over anyway. It´s a great record but we were out with Mötley Crüe on Elektra and both our albums coming out at the same time and the record company just said “Look, this is what´s happening. We´re going with the tattoos.”. We had no image, it was just jeans and t-shirts and just too soft looking and Eric Martin looked like a girl and like a girl in the wrong way, not like Mötley Crüe. (laughs) They told us straight up, “We´re dumping our money into Mötley Crüe.”. It was a bummer for us. We put six years in that band and got a lot of mileage out of it and had high powered management and ready to go. We had everything going for us and everybody thought it was gonna happen and it didn´t. But then Y&T came along and it was so fun and I still got to be in a band and travel and have a great time. (laughs)Any plans for another Y&T album?
John Nymann: Absolutely, yeah. We just released a live album. I´m not gonna say we really planned it, but every time we come off this two month tour here in the fall, the band is really tight and solid and we play this final show at Mystic Theater and we do it every year and it´s always a great show and we´re well rehearsed by then, so we went “Why don´t we shoot a video or let´s just document it and do something?” and since we were doing that, Tom Size brought all his recording equipment to link up with the DVD, but the problem with this place is that it´s got a terrible lighting truss and it just doesn´t look good enough for a DVD, so after we saw the footage we went “Naahhh, it´s no good.”. But we started listening back to the tracks and we go “Fuck, it´s pretty hot!”, so we thought “Let´s just release this thing.” and we didn´t think much of it. It was just gonna be a underground thing, but Frontiers said “We want that record!”, so it counts as another part of our contract so we gave it to them. It made a pretty big splash so that´s good. It´s the perfect record if you´re a Y&T fan because it´s our whole show and it covers all the bases. There´s a lot of good stuff on there. But we´re definitely full of ideas and ready to go and keep playing. “Facemelter”, it was a surprise how good that turned out considering we had no ideas going into the studio. I mean, I had a few and Phil had a few, but it wasn´t like… we were under contract and Jill said to us “You have to have this record done in three months!” and so we just started and then boom after a couple of weeks, the ideas started to flow and we had more than enough.Is that a good thing, working under pressure?
John Nymann: I´m gonna say it does in a way because other wise it´s so easy to go “Well, maybe we should redo it?”. We got to a point where we didn´t have time and “Those tracks are good enough.” And they turned out to be fine. Who knows? I can´t say for sure, but it´s like when you´re cooking. You don´t wanna over season it and all of a sudden you´re ruining it. They only thing I´d say about that record is we didn´t wanna have it over produced like in the 80´s. We wanted it to be more pure and keep it more organic. Some people were like “Why don´t you put more jizz on it?” and we were like “Why, let´s keep it raw.”. Straight ahead tones and not a bunch of echo and stuff on the vocals.
So there´s a possibility of something new next year?
John Nymann: I can´t say for sure when we´re gonna go back in there and do it, but within the next couple of years I´m sure. We have to do something.
After this tour then?
John Nymann: After this we start up in February playing in California until we go on the Monsters of Rock cruise again out of Florida in March. I think we´ll work on a tour before that, in the US and hit Chicago, New York and just work our way down to Florida.
Have you guys played Japan?
John Nymann: Yeah, we played Japan for “Facemelter” and now with the live album it´s possible that we might go back because Japan wants it to and they always wanna bring you over when you have a new product out, not necessarily a live album. They told us last time that they like the band so much, they´re not gonna be concerned with that, they would just like to bring us back. There´s demand, you know.
Was that the first time you played there?
John Nymann: No, back in the 80´s I played there with Y&T and then I went to Japan with Eric Martin when he took a break from Mr. Big. We play together all the time and we´re still good friends. I love singing with him. He´s so great! They took a little break and he did a solo album and just called me up and we did a three week tour in ´97 with 10 shows. Very easy tour, because Eric wanted to have a couple of days between each show to rest his voice and it was so easy and we got treated so well because he´s so big there. That was a lot of fun. I wasn´t even playing my guitar when Eric called. I just had put it down for a while and he went “You´re still playing, right?” and I said “Oh yeah, just give me a couple of weeks.” And I just woodshedded for a week to learn his album real well. That was so fun doing that tour. It´s so good to still be playing at my age. (laughs)
Your parents are from Norway. Are you playing there now?
John Nymann: No. I want to, but we couldn´t work it out this time.
Do you still have relatives there?
John Nymann: Oh yeah, my cousins are all there. My two brothers were born there and then my family came over in 1950 to Oakland. My dad was a merchant marine and so was his father. How it happened is, my grandfather got torpedoed outside New York in WWII on his merchant ship and it sunk and back in those days you couldn´t just go home, so he was stuck in America. He made it across America and he heard he had some relatives in Minnesota and then he heard about California and once he saw San Francisco Bay Area and saw all the shipping there, he called my dad and said “This is where you need to come.”. He bought a house there, my dad came over and the rest is history. I was born in Oakland. I went to school in Norway when I was ten. Went home to visit and stayed and started school for a while and I loved it, but “Jeg kan ikke snakke norsk.”. (laughs)Alright! Thank you John.
John Nymann: Thank you!/Niclas

The 69 Eyes är tillbaka med ett nytt album. Det är det tionde i ordningen och bär den självklara titeln "X". Jag ringde nyligen upp sångaren Jyrki 69 i Finland för att snacka om just nya plattan, men även om Scooby Doo, UNICEF, bandets kärlek till Sverige och galna sydamerikanska fans. En sak stod ganska snabbt klart under intervjun. Jyrki gillar att snacka. ﻿Tell me about this new album of yours? Did you produce it yourselves? I know that Stefan Boman mixed it.
Jyrki 69: It´s produced by these two Swedish guys called On The Verge and they are Pat Phoenix and Joakim Övrenius and it´s their studio name too. We´ve been co-writing with them for some eight years, so we come over to Stockholm once in a while to write with them. Now I felt it was the right time to do the whole record with them, so we started writing songs for this album and the first riff was actually written two years ago. It was the first song we wrote for this record. I sang it two years ago too actually. We didn´t know then that we were gonna do the whole album together. It became obvious as time was passing and as we hang out a lot in Stockholm and the studio is familiar to us and we´ve known these guys for so long, it was really nice to finally do the whole record. The time was just right because the previous record we did in Hollywood with Matt Hyde and that was of course something that you want to do, especially in our kind of band. You dream of going to the States and do an album in Hollywood. It was something that just had to happen. It was cool and when you go there, you naturally wanna achieve something. We had done all our albums in Finland and we´d had enough and we know what we can do here and we wanted some new influences. With an American producer you get the aggression, like American rock songs and in Hollywood you want the band to sound like their lives. Kinda like “Appetite for destruction”. That was that kinda album and our main motives and the things we really achieved there. It was great and we started touring and then after a couple of years we had this tour with Crashdiet and Hardcore Superstar and we were headlining the majority of the shows in Europe and it ended up at Cirkus in Stockholm. That was a really cool tour because that´s one of the beauties with the 69 Eyes. We can tour with Paradise Lost or Crashdiet or Cradle of Filth and we fit in. Anyway, we had an aggressive album and we were playing with these two bands and we wanted to do these slow melancholic songs, but what happens when we go on stage after these two bands and start playing this different stuff? How will their audience react? We did that and it was great to see the audience liking it and I thought that maybe that side of the 69 Eyes is the best side of us, so when we started to write new songs I thought “Hey, let´s try to return to the melancholy and the melodic darkness.” And especially when we decided to make the record in Stockholm with these two guys… it´s like, you guys (Swedes) have melodies and we have the melancholy, but you can always add something. We had a chance to pimp the songs. Like going to Sweden to pimp. (laughs) Give a bit of Swedish pimping. We have the 69 Eyes melancholic album and then we pimped it a little bit with the producers and we really concentrated on the musical side. On the previous record it was aggression and hard drums and guitars, but now the keyboards returned and also this time my vocals are the main instrument and they are leading the whole thing. That was one of the ways we approached the new record and you can really hear it. On the other hand we changed record companies and we changed management and everything. We just surrounded ourselves with positive old school friends and the album was done among friends. It´s a relaxed record in that way. That´s how it works these days. This corporate rock business crap is collapsing, so if you do things they have to be real. Same thing with the video for the song ”Red”. The last record was Hollywood and with this one I really wanted to pay respect and tribute to Stockholm and Sweden. The video was done by Patric Ullaeus. He came backstage ten years ago when we played Sticky Fingers in Gothenburg and gave me his business card and said “Hey, if you guys need a video, I can do some pretty good stuff.”. It never happened, but now the time was perfect. We´re doing another video with Patric too. I really wanted to concentrate on Sweden because it was the first country we played in after playing everywhere in Finland and we met a lot of our friends back then and it always felt like a second home. It takes like 45 minutes for me to fly there, so I´d rather go out in Stockholm than in Helsinki. I don´t know if I have any friends here (Helsinki) anymore. (laughs). It has always been an inspiration. It started with ABBA and now all the way up to “The girl with the dragon tattoo”. All this is carefully described on the DVD on the digipack version. There´s an hour long documentary called “Made in Sweden”. It starts with the first shows we played there in ´91 when Dregen from Backyard Babies came to see us. There´s a lot of rockers in there like Gemini Five, Crashdiet and Maryslim and also guys who run the clubs. It´s pretty interesting. The documentary goes deep and looks at the inspirations for 69 Eyes and it´s all related to mid 80´s Swedish garage rock like Nomads and the Leather Nun and all these bands that really inspired us to start the band.About videos. Do you feel you need videos these days? The only place where it´s shown is YouTube.
Jyrki 69: Going back. Recording an album in a studio is great and it´s a once in a lifetime experience all the time, but it´s not that pleasurable. The video should kinda be like an award for doing the album. That´s how I always looked at it. That´s why we´ve done videos with like Bam Margera and you get a lame excuse for the record company to pay us to go to Hollywood and party for a long weekend. (laughs) It´s like an award. “Hey, we did the album and now it´s time for the video, so let´s fly somewhere with a bunch of models and let´s make sure we have a few days off for partying.”. Also, we´re a visual band and people like to see it and the band changes a bit with every record. Not older, but changing the image. That´s also interesting to show to the fans. It´s a weird world to release a record in these days. The last album, which came out three years ago, back then we didn´t even have Facebook and now when the first single came out, fans could comment on Facebook and you get all these responses. Last time around we went on tour and we started to play and we had four or five new songs in the set and and we started talking “Did you notice how they reacted to that one? Maybe we should drop this one?” and the communication was on that level. Now you get the feedback immediately. It´s different, but also exciting in a way as well. On the other hand, we´re old school and some of our fans that come to the shows, I don´t think they´re into social media at all. Like if you have an old band like LA Guns and they have a few thousand people following them on Facebook, it doesn´t mean anything. When you go to the shows, they´re full and there are people standing with the album covers waiting to get them signed.The title of the album is “X” and there´s ten songs on it. Did that come right away or where there other titles floating around?
Jyrki 69: Well, once you get to your tenth album it´s not an unusual title. I checked it out and somebody said that Kylie Minogue recently released an album titled “X” and I just noticed that Spock´s Beard has one, but I don´t care. With the tenth album I just thought, “Why not celebrate it a little?”, because we´ve never celebrated anything. We´ve been playing for 23 years and we never had a 10th anniversary or a 20th anniversary or a compilation or a show. Nothing. We never thought about it because we´re always looking forward. Our band is progressing all the time and I think we are just climbing higher and higher. Sometimes less and sometimes a little bit more. I think our stocks are rising by the years. The more stable your fan base is, the higher your stocks are. I think we haven´t reached our peak yet and our musical progression is happening all the time. My vocals are not limited to a certain sound and we can for instance tour with everything from black metal bands to sleaze rock bands and we can probably play with Nickelback and Oasis as well. I think we have a long way to go and it´s just fun. We feel that things are developing all the time.
A totally different thing. Do you still do work for UNICEF?
Jyrki 69: Well, I´m a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF here in Finland and I have been for many years. It basically means that if they need an edgy person to say like “Remember to help!”. I think they were really clever to pick me up because it raises more interest to the issue, because everybody expects me to talk about vampires or drugs and rock and roll and all of a sudden I speak about real things. On the other hand, here in Finland we are a mainstream band and we appear on high profile talk shows and in women´s magazines and so on. It´s just part of that and also, like our latest single, it´s on every commercial radio station here. You don´t hear rock music or metal outside of Scandinavia, so here in Finland and Sweden we are privileged to have that on radio. In a few years I think Entombed will play at Skansen. (laughs) (Big park in Stockholm with wild animals and where people celebrate the national holiday every year.) Like here, we play at children´s charity shows and then you go to South America and there are fans so freaky, you´re afraid of them. They bring you human bones and they´re grave robbers and you´re like fucking freaked out. If the 69 Eyes represent darkness in some form, it´s more like Scooby Doo, you know. (laughs) We´re not that serious. Katatonia is more about real depression or stuff that´s going on in your head. We jump in the car with Scooby Doo and drive to Dracula´s castle and have fucking fun! (laughs)
That´s a good one! (laughs)
Jyrki 69: We actually wrote a bonus track for the album that is on Spotify and it´s called “Dracula´s castle” and we wrote it with one of my heroes, Rudi Protrudi from The Fuzztones. We wrote it in 15 minutes in our tour bus when we played in Berlin. It was like “Hey, let´s write a song called Dracula´s castle and it should have like a Scooby Doo kinda vibe!”.Cool! Touring then? Anything planned for Scandinavia or Sweden?
Jyrki 69: Yeah, sure! Now we´re playing in Finland for the last half of this year. We really wanna do a Swedish tour. We´ve always just passed by going to Europe and that was planned by our Central Europe management, but now that we´ve changed that, we´re really aiming at doing a Swedish tour. In Finland we can tour and play like 20 shows. There are more cities here, but we´d like to do a Swedish tour. The album was done there and we´ve got a lot of fans saying “Why don´t you come and play there and there?”, so we don´t just wanna do Gothenburg and Stockholm. We wanna do a Swedish tour and it´s been a long time since we played the smaller cities. That´s for spring time. For years we´ve just played Stockholm and Gothenburg and that´s great of course, but we feel we wanna play some other places too. You guys have so many cool bands that we want take with us on the road.Out into the Swedish woods and the countryside. That would be something.
Jyrki 69: Yeah, I love that! We should do that.
Thank you so much!
Jyrki 69: Thank you, mr Müller!

"Fun fact: Was just insulted by that sh–ty boy band #OneDirection in the lobby of our hotel this morning! Greetings Birmingham!” "No joke. That ACTUALLY HAPPENED. That group of kids in #OneDirection were d–kheads to @IIEROCKII @GWDrums and I." "They must call themselves that because all of their hair points in #OneDirection.”

"Here it is.. the 1st picture taken of me & Snake Sabo in 16 years. I know there are those of you reading this that have been waiting since 1996 to see this happen. We got to hang out together for the first time in .... well, a long time. We talked, laughed, & in the end, even hugged. It was great to see my old friend. It was great to talk with Dave about the past..... And the future :)"